Welcome to another Store Facts Post! Today’s store will be the Loblaws in Heartland Town Centre in Mississauga. This store opened sometime before June of 2003. This store has the older Market decor package, which is becoming rare as most stores with this decor package has been remodeled to Great Food or Inspire. Aside from that, it’s you typical older barn-model Loblaws store. Loblaws Layout The layout follows a typical Market Layout with produce and service departments on the left and a later addition of Joe Fresh and Books & Magazines in the front right of the store. This store still ..read more

Everyone knows those annoying ads that come on constantly trying to sell you something (**cough**Kroger**cough**). We all hate them, but some are just quality and iconic. Here are some of my favourite Retail Ad Campaigns that I enjoy the most. 1. No Frills Anime Ad (2021) No Frills video Here’s a cool campaign that No frills recently came out with. It features . They even have a comicin their weekly flyer. 2. No Name Simple Check (2019) No Name Ad This one is unique and really creative. To promote the new Simple check program for their generic private label, No Name, Loblaw made a creative a ..read more

Image: Longo’s Today, Sobeys’ parent company Empire Company, announced that they reached a agreement a 51% stake in 36 store Ontario grocer, Longo’s and Longo’s online grocery delivery service, Grocery Gateway for $357 million, pending approval. At this time, Longo’s will continue operating as their own brand. Source: Toronto Star ..read more

2 days ago, Canadian Tire announced that they are going to close all 18 National Sports stores, all located in Southern Ontario. The reason is because they want to reduce overlap with their other banners. To view the list of locations, check out the list I’ve made over on DZ’s Retail World. Until next post, DZ Source: Global News ..read more

Credit: Google Maps Welcome back to another edition of store facts. Today we’ll be looking at a old school (sort of) Loblaws store located at 270 The Kingsway in Toronto. I’m not sure when this store opened, but it looks old, so I assume in the 70s judging by the façade and the weird placement of the Loblaws emblem, which is separate from the wordmark. This store was cheaply remodeled to Great Food sometime in the late 2000s. Aside from the Great Food text, the outside seems to be original. This store has only 5 aisles, which is the smallest I’ve seen in a mainstream full service grocery store ..read more

Welcome to the last post of 2020, where I’ll be talking about the first real dead mall I knew of, the infamous Honeydale Mall in the Etobicoke area of Toronto, Ontario, which closed in 2013. It was a 2 anchor community mall, the common type for dead malls around here. As stores, like Walmart, move out and essentially rob the mall of one of their two or their only anchor, it sends the mall into a downward spiral if they don’t fill the space fast. This is what happened to Honeydale Mall. History The mall opened in 1973 with Woolco and some sort of grocery store. Woolco converted into Walmart so ..read more

Sorry for the lack of posts this month, I’ve been busy with life and had no time to write any posts, so I’m posting one I already had mostly completed. Expect posts to only come once a month for now on as a result. Also, there will be no map due to time constrains, however one will be made available on DZ’s Retail World in the future. Today’s store facts post will be on the Walmart Supercentre located across form Sherway Gardens in the Etobicoke area of Toronto. Background This Walmart opened around 2004 relocating from the now abandoned Honeydale Mall, which is a story for another post, open ..read more

Image: Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under CC0 1,0 Le Chateau decided to shutter 123 stores and online operations after filing for creditor’s protection due to the pandemic. The closure will result in the loss of about 1400 jobs. This is another blow for malls as they are already losing some retailers due to many chains pulling out of the country or ceasing operations due to the financial strain caused by the pandemic. Source: Retail Insider ..read more

Welcome to Odd Retail, where we explore weird and interesting retail. I know of many weird Walmart stores around the blog’s coverage area. These Walmart stores exist due to acquisitions of various chains such as Zellers and because of this, these locations don’t look or feel like regular Walmart stores. Here are a few interesting ones. The Frankenstein (Kmart > Zellers > Walmart) Here’s a Walmart stranger than the Walget, a Kmart turned Zellers turned Walmart. The story of how these came to be dates back to Kmart selling their Canadian stores to Zellers in 1998 and then Walmart buying so ..read more

Indigo is the largest and only major surviving bookstore chain in the country. The Indigo brand has been expanding like crazy lately with a lot of new stores replacing Chapters and Coles locations. They have 209 stores operating under various banners including Indigo, Chapters, Coles, and IndigoSprit. In today’s post, I’ll be going over the rise of Indigo and how they grew to be Canada’s #1 bookstore. Brief History Indigo Books & Music was founded in 1996 by Heather Reisman. Indigo opened their first “superstore” in 1997. Indigo then merged with Chapters in August 2001, which go ..read more